


There's a First Time for Everything

by Tormented_Gale



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Character Study, Gen, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tormented_Gale/pseuds/Tormented_Gale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble Requested on Tumblr: A drabble about the first time the character killed someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a First Time for Everything

Even now, in the heat of battle, Sync does not take a life. He could, oh certainly, but it seems to be a more difficult task to hold back. It’s a challenge he finds amusement in when everything else has gone to shit, and he clings to the tiny bit of freedom he has even though the concept is still a lost cause. He smiles, just a little, just enough to unnerve his enemies and give them a hint that maybe not all lights are on upstairs, and when he takes them down with a clever punch they never expect it.

They don’t expect  _him_.

He wipes the blood from his split lip and briefly assesses himself, noting with some annoyance that his leg has a neat slice up the thigh, and his arm is bleeding where some enemy soldier got through his guard. He smears the dark red liquid down his arm, tilting his head as it slimes up his fingers, and the stench of copper fills his nose. A tried and true battlefield, this - so similar to so many others he has either observed or fought on.

Ahead, he sees his enemies begin to regroup. His own soldiers are exhausted, running on fumes, and he wants Van to pull them back, but this is likely a test, like everything else in his short life. Even a glance to Van informs him of the same - the high and mighty Commandant watches from a high hill, Legretta at his side. She, at least, frowns, but says nothing; loyal to the end to the man she not so secretly loves (and hates, Sync’s seen the glance often enough in his own mirror to know what that looks like). 

Van mouthes one word, and Sync blinks, unsure if he understood it right. For a moment, Van tenses, his eyes narrowing and hand briefly clenching on the hilt of his sword, and he repeats it - one syllable. A laughably short, simple word. And yet something Sync now has no choice about.

His enemies run at him, but they move in slow motion, the clock ticking by with a soft, familiar tune in his head. He steps, once, twice, before he too is running, engulfed in a maelstrom of power that pauses the fools so close, too close. They know, he knows, and that knowledge means nothing to him, like so many other things. This is just one more choice taken from him.

The arte burns in his flesh, desperate to get out and do his bidding, and he grins through the pain and is for once grateful his mask hides his eyes. He reaches forward, a green ghost, and shouts, “Now, you die! Akashic Torment!” just as he reaches his enemies. He is not happy to do this - he feels nothing, not even as he rips a man’s throat open, or as another’s face is so badly cut that he is simultaneously blinded and silenced. He doesn’t notice the way their flesh is cut to ribbons or the gurgling as a few desperately try to live.

When it ends, he steps through the field of fresh corpses, his black clothing soaked through, their blood trickling down his body and obscuring his wounds. His boots squeak as they push through the viscera and he merely glances around him as he comes to a stop, a few steps away from his work, his carnage.

His soldiers look on with thinly veiled terror, though a few are so filled with awe that Sync is sickened by it. He looks back at what he does, expecting to feel more ill from it, to at least be horrified by what he has done, as that should be the response, but instead he feels nothing. Not excitement, not embarrassment, not fear, not righteousness. Just… nothing.

As he turns away to rejoin his men, and purposely ignores Van’s pleased smile, he feels that emptiness gnaw at him, and wishes, for once, that the apathy would give way to disgust, just so the people in front of him would stop looking at him as a monster. He did enough of that on his own.


End file.
